Buried Treasure: Freeing California Data to Improve Health Care

May 31, 2012

Jonah Frohlich, Manatt Health Solutions

Susan Ingargiola, Manatt Health Solutions

This is archived content; for historical reference only.

Patients, care providers, payers, and policymakers all seek to make evidence-based, data-driven health care decisions. While various state agencies release health care claims data for research and analysis, a strong argument can be made for making valuable state health-related data available for broader use.

This issue brief highlights federal and state efforts to “free the data” and outlines how California would benefit.

Among the highlights of how California can free its health care data:

Make health care claims data more accessible for research

Make health care claims data more accessible for demonstration programs

Create an all-payer claims database (APCD) to support new health insurance risk-adjustment programs

Create a robust, publicly available health care data portal

Support linked data and application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable better access to and use of data